As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
In data storage systems, users of different storage technologies store enormous amounts of data on different storage devices. From a storage array of storage devices, a user may choose any combination of the storage devices to create a virtual storage resource or logical unit. Computer systems are constantly improving in terms of speed, reliability, and processing capability. As is known in the art, computer systems that process and store large amounts of data typically include a one or more processors in communication with a shared data storage system in which the data is stored. The data storage system may include one or more storage devices, usually of a fairly robust nature and useful for storage spanning various temporal requirements, e.g., disk drives. The one or more processors perform their respective operations using the storage system. Mass storage systems (MSS) typically include an array of a plurality of disks with on-board intelligent and communications electronics and software for making the data on the disks available.
In addition, enterprises are dealing with more data than ever, and traditional infrastructure no longer provides the reliability, performance and efficiency that enterprise workloads (e.g., enterprise information handling systems) require. This reality is challenging information technology (IT) managers to adopt simpler and more streamlined and cost-effective approaches, such as software-defined infrastructure (SDI). SDI enables enterprises to enjoy the power and efficiency of IT as a service by separating hardware and software and focusing on extensive automation and orchestration. This allows IT to supply the business with scalable, agile resources for cloud- and web-based services and native cloud workloads.
Also, information processing systems increasingly utilize reconfigurable virtual resources to meet changing user needs in an efficient, flexible and cost-effective manner. For example, cloud computing and storage systems implemented using virtual resources have been widely adopted. Other virtual resources now coming into widespread use in information processing systems include Linux containers. Such containers may be used to provide at least a portion of the virtualization infrastructure of a given information processing system.